Policing Posts
What the #MeToo Campaign Teaches About Stop and Frisk
“What the #Metoo Campaign Teaches About Stop and Frisk” applies feminist tools to investigate current policing methods. Feminist tools exposed sexual harassment by listening to the stories of those affected, by a nuanced understanding of power dynamics, and by recognizing that consent is impossible within certain unequal relationships.
The Worrisome Future of Policing Technology
A New York Times op-ed piece discusses the recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Carpenter v. United States, which ruled that the government must now have probable cause and a warrant to access cellphone location records.
The Reliable Application of Fingerprint Evidence
In November 2017, a state appellate court did something almost unprecedented: It held that a trial judge made an error by admitting testimony on latent fingerprinting.
Interrogation Parity
Over the past several years there has been increased focus on the way police are treated by the criminal justice system and their own internal disciplinary mechanisms. Scholars and the media have taken note of special interrogation protections afforded to the police when they become the target of internal or criminal investigation.
California Supreme Court upholds collection of DNA from suspected felons not yet convicted of a crime
The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that authorities are legally entitled to collect DNA from suspected felons when they are booked into local lockups, overturning a lower court ruling that questioned the constitutionality of the practice.
Pushback Against the CLOUD Act
USA Today addresses the privacy concerns raised after Congress passed the CLOUD Act, a bill that would allow police in other countries to have access to emails and other electronic communications more easily from their own citizens as well as Americans.
Cross-Enforcement of the Fourth Amendment
In “Cross-Enforcement of the Fourth Amendment,” forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, Orin S. Kerr of the Southern California Gould School of Law tackles the complexity of identifying who can enforce what law under the Fourth Amendment.
Everyday justice
Professor Tracey Meares has sandwiched this trip to Chicago between two teaching days at the Yale Law School, timing it for when her kids are out of the house. On this cool Thursday morning in May 2017, she’s back in her favorite city, where she lived for almost 20 years. She’s come to Chicago State University to help train investigators for the city’s new Civilian Office of Police Accountability. At Yale, she teaches students in their 20s, in a wood-paneled room hung with portraits in oil, but here in this windowless, fluorescent-lit room, her students are three dozen former prosecutors, defense attorneys, and ex-cops. They will soon begin investigating complaints against Chicago’s often reviled police.
State Supreme Court requires warrant to track cars with GPS
Police cannot put a GPS device onto a vehicle to track its movements without first getting a warrant, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
Digital Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Carpenter v. United States, where the question presented is whether the Fourth Amendment permits the warrantless seizure and search of a user’s cellphone location and movement information.